Grunt: NounVerb
by OhSoDeadly
Summary: 1. A low, short guttural sound made by an animal or a person. 2. A short-tempered, hard-assed krogan juvenile with too much free time between missions. See also GARRUS VAKARIAN'S HEADACHE.


_Foul. Adjective/noun. (a)_ Offensive to the senses, especially through having a disgusting smell or taste or being unpleasantly soiled. _(b) _An unfair or invalid stroke or manoeuvre, especially one involving interference with an opponent.

Grunt (_Urdnot _Grunt_) _snorted after reading the tiny script in the stupidly frail human book. A _dick-shun-air-ee_, it was called. Sounded long and tedious. Didn't matter. What did matter was that his mood, like the book said, was foul. The first one, not the second. The second one made no sense. An unfair manoeuvre? Whoever had written that was stupid and had never been in combat. There was nothing unfair about getting the jump on your enemy and ripping their limbs off one by one, _slowly-_

He shook his head, and growled. The battle lust was creeping up on him again. Taken care of momentarily on Tuchanka, where he, Shepard and that pinhead Garrus had faced down varren and klixen in the dozens and even an Aralakh-damned thresher maw. He gloated inwardly as he remembered firing the last shot from his weapon into the creature's bleeding, bullet-ridden head, and watching it fall. Though that victory was _nothing_ compared to what he felt when he'd killed Gatatog Uvenk, that whining, skulking little bastard. Like pulling the tail off a pyjak, it was that simple. He'd do it again if he had the chance-

With a raw-throated yell he slammed his fist into the wall and watched it dent. Just outside his quarters, he saw that annoying human engineer, Donnelly, quickly scamper down the stairs and out of sight. Good. Let them fear him. Let the name Urdnot Grunt strike fear into the hearts of all those who knew it. The wrathful fist of Battlemaster Shepard, that was him. They'd faced down Collectors, geth, mercs and anything else this piss-pot galaxy had to throw at them. Let them come. Let them _all come!_

But until then, his mood was foul. His armour, covered in geth pulse rifle burns, was foul. The stink of charred metal and blood in his room was foul. Right now, he hated the Normandy, and everyone on it. He wanted to be _out! _Or at least, have somewhere he could get rid of this rage that was building up inside him. This ship was no place for a krogan. Especially a bored one.__

He prepared to make another indentation in the wall, just alongside the first, when he heard the hum of the doors sliding open. _Now _who could it be? If it wasn't important then he'd grab that sawblade attachment he'd been working on earlier and go _swish, swish, _and watch the blood stain the floor. He whirled and bared his teeth. "What?"

It was, quite possibly, the last person he wanted to see. Garrus-fucking-Vakarian, the turian warrior and former vigilante, leaning casually against the bulkhead. He raised his brow in a sign of mock surprise. "Planning on remodelling the place, Grunt? Might want to double check with Shepard first."

Grunt raised a finger, stepping aggressively forward. "Leave, turian! Now! Or I won't be responsible." The tone in his voice would be enough to make another krogan back down.

But he didn't leave. Instead, the bastard walked in, closer to him. "Now just calm down, friend. We're still a few hours from Ilium, and somehow I doubt Shepard will be giving us shore leave. So that means we have some time to entertain ourselves. And to that end, I'm afraid it's led me to you."

Grunt laughed. This one was bolder than he thought. Maybe all of Okeer's memories about willow-spined turians weren't entirely accurate. But that didn't mean anything. "Move another step, _friend_, and you won't live to see Ilium. I'll apologise to Shepard later." A little thread of curiosity wormed through his wall of latent rage. "Why the hell would you want to come down here anyway?"

Garrus spread his hands and sighed. "Well, believe it or not, I finished calibrating the gunnery station. Never thought I'd see the day, but...anyway, Shepard's busy talking to Joker, Mordin and Jacob are busy with R&D, Miranda's too cold for my liking and Jack is...well, Jack. Tali and Thane are both out on an assignment, near the Horsehead Nebula. So that leaves me and you, a turian and a krogan, the unlikeliest of allies in an unfriendly universe." He punctuated this little speech with a magnanimous sweep of the hands.

_You must be joking, turian. _He grunted, turned backward and went to his weapons bench, running the blade attachment along a Cerberus-issue whetstone. The implication, he hoped, was obvious. It was taking every ounce of his self-restraint not to plant it in Garrus' scaly neck.

He heard a _snick_, and turned to see Garrus holding a long, tapered turian combat knife up to the fluorescent lights that continued to hurt his eyes, even after being so long out of the tank. The former vigilante caught his eye and grinned, the scars on his face stretching into stark lines. "You like it? Belonged to my father, once upon a time. You would've liked him, Grunt. He loved a good fight as well. Didn't leave as much of a mess, though."

It was an impressive blade, he had to admit. But he would not let that remark pass. He faced Garrus and snarled menacingly. "No turian will ever be a friend of mine! That goes double for you, Garrus." Despite himself, he picked up the shotgun blade and waved it around. "It'll cut through our enemies. Could do the same to your toy knife there!"

"Is that right?" Garrus flipped his knife from one hand to the other, and suddenly dropped into a wielder's stance. "Let's test that, shall we?"

_Finally. Someone to fight. Even this pinhead._

Grunt charged forward, and slashed the sawblade horizontally. Garrus neatly ducked and thrusted neatly between his shoulder blades. Half an inch of steel punched through skin, drawing a tiny bead of blood. It was no worse an injury than a wasp sting. He retaliated by locking his own blade against Garrus and delivering a stinging uppercut. But the turian dipped his chin and took the worst of the blow to the shoulder, knocking him off-balance. Grunt attempted another slash, but it was parried away. The ringing echoes of steel clashing stretched out in the small space.  
Breathing heavily, the pair circled each other. "You have more finesse than I thought, Grunt, "Garrus commented idly. "Makes a nice change from your usual "run-in-and-dismember-everything" style."

True to his name, he grunted.

The pinhead wouldn't stop running his mouth though. "So did you pick up that skill as you went? Or is it more of Okeer's memories?"

"Both." Maybe if he answered a few questions, they could get back to killing each other in peace. "The great Battlemaster Verdak of Clan Tarikk was the greatest sword-fighter in krogan history. I remember..." He frowned, reaching back into that morass of recollections and reminisces that weren't his. "He once fell into a nest full of rabid klixen with nothing but his blade. Took him nine days to find a way out, without food or water. They say his skin was stained black with the ash of their blood. Never washed out." He bulled his way towards his opponent, but he shimmied to one side and retreated.

For his part, Garrus looked impressed. "That's quite the epic." He swung at Grunt's brow-plate but it glanced off. The young krogan slammed a palm into his chest and sent him stumbling backwards. Sensing an advantage, he charged forward and slammed the turian up against the wall. Planning to seize him around the neck, Garrus intercepted his hand with an arm and the two strained against each other. Between growls, he choked out, "This would probably sound awkward to anyone walking past."

"Shut up!" Grunt shouted, feeling a headache building up. This was _not_ going the way he'd hoped. He wanted this upstart squashed beneath his boot. "Stop talking, turian. You're a damned pain in my ass." He released his hold on Garrus and put everything into a punch, but before he could make it connect his opponent dropped to the floor and rolled out of the way. Grunt turned around and snarled, reaching for his shotgun against the wall. He was out of patience, and someone would feel it.

Garrus barked a laugh upon seeing this. "I might come off as a little biased, but I think there might be a calmer way of settling this."

"Calm? There's no room for calm. Not with me, Garrus. I'm pure krogan, or did you forget?" He raised the weapon threateningly.

"No, I didn't." He stepped forward, palms out like he had done when first entering the room. His tone became serious. "But that doesn't give you an excuse to act like a madman all the time. Hell, look at Thane. He's supposed to be the best damned assassin in the galaxy, but does he come off as cold? Of course he doesn't. Because he's learned to make a separate space for all the stuff that doesn't involve shooting people in the head from five hundred metres with a Mantis." Garrus chuckled, a mischievous look in his eyes. "And I know something about that. Archangel, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember!" Grunt's grip on the shotgun shook. What the hell was going on? He wasn't actually _listening_ to this idiot? Better, far better to just shoot him now...drag the body to the airlock and-

"No." Garrus was shaking his head. "I know what you're thinking, and no. You can't just...make something go away every time it pisses you off. You're the definition of ballistic. You've got to have more control than that. Shepard would say the same, you know."

Grunt sneered. "Save your sentiments for someone who gives a shit, turian. I'll do as I like." He pulled the trigger.

And it clicked empty. Baffled, Grunt checked the loading port and discovered the thermal shells were missing.

He shot a glare at Garrus, who chuckled again. "Oh, I might have been down here earlier, poking around. And I might have misplaced the shells from your gun...honest mistake."

This was unforgivable. "You touched my weapon?" he roared, slamming his fists together. Nothing would stop his rampage now-

The doors hummed as the turian stepped through them. They closed, and a red circle flashed into place, denoting a lock. "Take some time to cool off, Grunt. You look like you could use it." Footsteps as he walked away.

Grunt stared at the door. Five seconds passed. Ten. A minute. Pretty soon he realised that no help was forthcoming, and the fight was over.

And, strangely, he felt better.

With a growl, he stomped back to his tank and fished around for that human book again. Maybe it wasn't much, but it was all he had for now. He flipped to one section, until he found the word he was looking for.

_Ballistic. Adjective/slang. (a) _Of or relating to projectiles or their flight. _(b) _Moving under the force of gravity only. _(c)_ To become mad/wild.

Ballistic. He wasn't sure of what that pinhead had meant, but now that he did, he liked the sound of it. Ballistic. It wasn't very simple, and it grated on his tongue, but it was still a good word. He would have to remember that for the future. When he was busy ripping Garrus' eyes from their sockets. Or something like that.

Reading further, he saw that there were even more words for what he felt day in and day out. Wrathful, vengeful, livid, apoplectic, seething...there were so many. Part of him felt annoyed, that they would have to find so many complicated ways to describe something so...easy. But on the other hand, this was good. If there were this many words...there had to be a lot of anger. And wasn't he living proof?

Hours later, when the door-seal had ceased functioning and he could leave the room, he found Garrus working at his usual post in the forward gun battery. He did not turn as Grunt stomped inside. "Hey, Shepard. Need me for something? I'm thinking if we get a few more tons of iridium we'd be making real inroads towards that Thanix Cannon-"

The krogan's boot caught him right on the ass ,sending him headfirst over the calibrating panel. The yell of surprise was cut off as his head impacted sharply with one of the ordnance relays. Dazed, the turian lifted his chin and stared at Grunt, a sleepy half-smile and glazed eyes. "Well, normally I'd say that was rude, but..."

Urdnot Grunt laughed. "I'm the fucking definition. Remember?"

And remember they did. Maybe outside of that room, they were polar opposites and rivals, and on the battlefield, they were simply ensuring that their heads stayed on their respective shoulders, but inside that room, an understanding had been created. And while it would never be voiced, together they'd made something rare indeed. An agreement between turian and krogan, and one that didn't involve bullying another species or somesuch.

Maybe it wasn't perfect, but Garrus didn't believe in perfection anyway, and Grunt hadn't looked that one up, so he had nothing to compare it to.


End file.
